Enseigné par

Peter Kenez

Professor Emeritus

Transcription

I would talk today about a special period in Soviet history, which is called the New Economic Policies, the NEP period. This is a period which is debated, discussed among historians, and those who are attracted to the idea of socialism with a human face. Like, do recall the experience of the NEP of the 1920s, as a possible example to follow. What they have in mind is that, this was a period when a remarkable extend of intellectual freedom, a mixed economy could coexist with an authoritarian political system, a system which regarded itself as socialist. What l will talk about today. First, I want to talk about the consequences of the revolution. What kind of regime could be established afterwards, and how difficult it was for the Bolsheviks to establish their authority, and in effect be able to administer the country. Then, I want to talk about the political system, which existed in the course of the 1920s. In particular, I want to describe the one-party state. This is a political system which was an innovation which had not existed elsewhere. The Russians in so many ways and so many times in history have been path breakers. Namely, they embarked on experiment which no other nation, no other country had done before. Then I want to talk about the economy and society as it existed in the 1920s. Later, I would say something about the culture of the 1920s which was still part of European culture, which still had a degree of heterogeneity, which made it lively and in many ways very attractive. Finally, I would talk about the political struggle among the leaders which ultimately led to the collapse and exit of the NEP system and the introduction of a very different kind of political economic and social order. The consequences of the revolution were horrendous in terms of destruction, in terms of misery which imposed on human lives. More people died in the course of the Civil War. As a result of fighting, as a result of carrying out pogroms which the Bolsheviks did against the Jewish population. But most significantly, as the result of a great famine. The great famine of 1920, 1921, 1922, which came about because of the collapse of the economic order and the inability of the regime to feed the cities. That famine was alleviated to a considerable extent by Western help, in particular, American help. Well, the political and economic order, with which the Bolsheviks fought in the Civil War was described, was called war communism. War communism meant nationalizing every aspect of their economic life, even the smallest unit. Most significantly, it meant suspension of trade, free trade in grain. This came about not because the Bolsheviks believed in such an economic system. It came about as a necessity because, how could they feed their army, how could they feed the cities. The only way this could be done by actually sending out detachment and take away the grain from the peasants. And the consequence of that was that the peasants lost their incentive to produce and it was a descending spiral. Now, the Bolsheviks were in the worse position than their enemies, the whites, in as much as they occupied the center of the country rather than the agricultural regions in the south and in the east and consequently, the methods which they had to use in order to extort grain was more cruel and that to a considerable extent, turned the peasantry against them. And it is remarkable that the peasants still prefer them rather than wanting to bring back the Tsarist system with the landlords. What happened at the end of the Civil War was that the peasant roaming bands, anarchist bands, the regime was unable to control them. And it threatened the stability of the political system. This is in 1920, 1921, the anarchist leaders, Makhno and Antonov. These bands could not possibly establish a system of government, but they could create a great deal of disorder. The final straw which impelled the Bolshevik leadership in 1921, to suspend war communism and accept the return of a degree of free enterprise was the rising of the sailors in the Kronstadt, which is an island in the Baltic. Kronstadt was an important naval base in as much as it controlled the entrance to Petrograd. And rising was a great, what might say, spiritual blow to the Bolshevik leadership because they had always described the sailors as the flower of the revolution. The sailors participated in the Bolshevik movement to a greater extent than any other branch of the very large army. The reason for that was because the sailors were recruited from the working classes in as much as these were people who were able to handle machinery to a greater extent and consequently they were a significant revolutionary force on the side of the Bolsheviks and that they too expressed their disapproval and staged a small scale revolution, demanding not the return of the old order but their slogan was "Soviets without Bolsheviks." The Bolshevik leadership of course did not look as if they had suppressed, that rising with great ease. But nonetheless, the dance party congress which was taking place at the Saint Anne decided the necessity of introducing changes, and this was the birth of the New Economic Policies in 1921. The fundamental aspect of the change which was introduced, allowing the peasants to sell their produce and they would have to pay their tax not as before in form of grain but money payments. Not a great deal followed from this because if the peasants were able to sell the product, they would be able to buy. Now, what was there to buy? The Bolshevik leaders, flexible as they were, recognize the need to allow the recreation of a considerable degree of private enterprise. In concrete terms meant that factories which occupied, which employed fewer than 100 people could operate, a small trade was re-established. And this was a remarkably successful system in as much as after the great misery and the great collapse. It was able to bring back a degree of normality. The consequence of that was that since the state-owned trading system could not have existed, individuals had to take that role. These people came to be called the nap man. And these were small traders who traveled in the village to sell their produce, to buy from the peasants, and sell whatever the peasants wanted and could buy. And from the Bolshevik leadership point- from the point of view of the Bolshevik leadership, these were very unattractive characters. They represented everything which the Bolsheviks disliked. On the other hand, they had to be allowed to operate because there was really no alternative and they played a major role in reviving the economy to a rather great extent. In the course of the Civil War, the cities came to be depopulated. And only by the middle of the 1920s that the population more or less returned into the cities. Agriculture was first to revive. In agriculture, what was happening was that now all land belonged to the peasants. Of course landlords could not have returned. And the peasants re-established the peasant commune, and the peasant commune was the fundamental administrative unit in the countryside. The country during the Tsarist period was very thinly governed. That is the Tsarist regime did not have those instruments with which it could lead, in which could it interfere with the life of the peasants. Now, after the revolution, the Bolshevik control over the countryside was even weaker. There were approximately a quarter of a million Bolsheviks in the countryside, and there were half a million settlements. The consequence of that was that the peasants were left alone to their own devices to a greater extent than ever before. Now let me talk about the political system. In order to approach this political system, first of all, we have to understand who the Bolsheviks were, and how they saw their tasks. The Bolsheviks, when they took power, they did not simply want to introduce a new political order. They wanted to remake humanity. They came and they carried out the revolution thinking that this is the world transformation. A moment in which they were served, in which will produce the spark to which their working classes of the rest of the world will respond. That is, they were to the greatest extent internationalists. They could not believe that the socialist order could survive in a capitalist hostile sea. They believed that the revolution can be successful only as a part of world revolution. Furthermore, because of Marx, because they took it for granted, that societies develop according to world social laws, historic laws. They recognized, they believed that Europe was more economically advanced and therefore, the proper time, the proper place to start the revolution would have been in the middle of Europe and Germany. Lenin often expressed their dismay that he had to deal with the Russian people rather than the Germans who would have responded with greater degree of diligence and obedience than the Russians would. The remarkable thing is that the Bolsheviks belong to the extreme wing of the Westernizers. That is, these were people who did not think that Russia has a special genius. From Lenin's point of view, from the Bolshevik point of view, Russia had no special standing. It simply was more backward than the rest of Europe. And this was something very disturbing, something with which they had to respond to their own satisfaction. How come that the revolution occurred in Russia rather than elsewhere? The great irony is that the revolution which was carried out in the name of westernizing and be part of an international entity, automatically cut Russia off from the west, and in fact contributed to its separateness.